Blog Power

During the session they talked about how the wide availability of broadband Internet service is giving Web users access to more sophisticated applications and content that use voice and video broadcast technology.
A major piece of evidence for this view was the successful global Web broadcasts of the Live 8 benefit concerts. Calacanis and Bankoff contend that Live 8 will lead to an increasing volume of Web broadcasts of a wide range of entertainment and information programs to compete with traditional broadcast outlets for audience attention.

Calacanis focused on the power of blogs to give people who are knowledgeable and passionate about a host of different topics a wide new forum for their views.

In an interview after the presentation Calacanis said that through blogs "citizen journalists are being put at the top level by AOL with professional journalists."
In fact, he contends that experience has shown that professional journalists dont necessarily make the best bloggers and most bloggers would find it hard to make the transition to the discipline of traditional journalism.
Click here to read about problems that Netscape had with the initial release of the Netscape 8 browser.
Being passionate about a topic is what drives people to write blogs or they wouldnt go to the trouble, Calacanis notes. Most of the bloggers that Weblogs signs on as free-lance or full-time bloggers were writing about the same topics on their own time for free.
Calacanis said that an increasing amount of blog content will be syndicated and linked to AOL. However, Calacanis never said publicly that he or his organization has been given the task of implementing blogs at Netscape.
Since they are all part of the same corporate family, its apparent that AOL and Netscape can arrange to link to Weblogs content whenever they want, whether or not they officially appoint Calacanis as Netscapes blog czar.
While doubtless some Netscape and AOL users will welcome the addition of some interesting and passionate new blogs, its hard to see how this is going to resurrect Netscape as a Web powerhouse.
Anything that makes Netscape an attractive and valuable stop for Web users is a good move and you have to give AOL points for doing anything that keeps this Web pioneer in the game.
John Pallatto is a veteran journalist in the field of enterprise software and Internet technology. He can be reached at john_pallatto@ziffdavis.com.Check out eWEEK.coms for the latest news, reviews and analysis about productivity and business solutions.

John Pallatto is eWEEK.com's Managing Editor News/West Coast. He directs eWEEK's news coverage in Silicon Valley and throughout the West Coast region. He has more than 35 years of experience as a professional journalist, which began as a report with the Hartford Courant daily newspaper in Connecticut. He was also a member of the founding staff of PC Week in March 1984. Pallatto was PC Week's West Coast bureau chief, a senior editor at Ziff Davis' Internet Computing magazine and the West Coast bureau chief at Internet World magazine.